The Iced Coffee Hour - From $0 To $1 Billion | The Quest of Tom Bilyeu

Episode Date: January 17, 2023

Start creating high-quality content easily with Streamyard: https://clickurl.ca/ICH-StreamYard Start optimizing your sleep and check out Oura today: https://clickurl.ca/ICH-Oura  SUBSCRIBE TO TOM BILYEU: @TomBilyeu  Check out the Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/icedcoffeehour  Add us on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan https://www.instagram.com/alex_nava_p... Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ... For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [e-mail] GET YOUR FREE STOCK WORTH UP TO $1000 ON PUBLIC & SEE MY STOCK TRADES - USE CODE GRAHAM: http://www.public.com/graham  The Equipment used: https://tinyurl.com/y78py5g2 Audio Equipment Used In Podcast: Shure SM7B mics, cloud lifters, rodecaster pro audio interface The YouTube Creator Academy:   Learn EXACTLY how to get your first 1000 subscribers on YouTube, rank videos on the front page of searches, grow your following, and turn that into another income source: https://bit.ly/2STxofv $100 OFF WITH CODE 100OFF  For Podcast Inquiries, please contact [e-mail] *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's something else here now. Something new. From exclusively on Paramount Plus. It's the series Stephen King calls Scary as Hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. Sci-fi vision calls it the best show streaming right now. We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules. Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch.

Saving those children is how we all go home. From binge all episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. Tom Billioux sold his company Quest Nutrition for a billion dollars in cash. And today we had the opportunity to fly to Los Angeles and learn the secrets from someone who successfully started and sold one of the most recognizable nutrition brands in the world. To be honest, we both went into this having no idea what to expect. But within one hour, we were blown away with what we heard. So you'll be able to get an inside look into what it's like to sell a billion dollar company, how you could start your own business from the ground up, and how you could find the love of your life as soon as you're able to.

subscribe and hit the like button if you haven't done that already. Have you done that, Jack? I have. But before we get into it, we got to thank our sponsor's Streamyard. Upfront cost can be a huge deterrent for people trying to get into content creation. And if you want to start a podcast like us, surprisingly, you don't need to build this super fancy studio. And that's because of our sponsor, Streamyard. Streamyard's a powerful live streaming production program that allows you to broadcast live video to social media channels like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch. With Streamyard, you can easily create high quality live streams with just a few clicks and their intuitive interface makes it easy to get started.

They allow you to create your own custom backgrounds, add multiple cameras, and also add on multiple guests. Streamyard also has powerful analytic tools that help you measure the success of your live stream. With Streamyard, you can see how many people are watching your live and also which social media platforms are driving the most viewers. Plus, they integrate with popular streaming and analytics tools like Google Analytics and YouTube Creator Studio. So try Streamyard today using the link down below in the description to create professional looking live streams in just minutes. Again, the link is down below in the description to get started today, and now let's get to the podcast. We've got to start where we're at. This house is very special to me

because it was sold by Jason Oppenheim. When did you buy it? Was it two years ago? Three years ago. So that would have been 2019, very end of 2019. Yeah. So I covered this house actually on my channel when it was being built. And I went through with a developer. A really nice guy. And with Jason, too. And going through this house, the amount of work that he put in this is, insane. It's telling Jack. It's like removing some of the telephone poles in front of the house and like even fixing the roofs of the people below you to make sure that they're not ugly roofs. Those are things that you don't think about when you're buying like a few million dollar house. But when you get up to this caliber of home and Jack said it's like, dude, this is the nicest house I've ever been. This is the

nicest house I've ever been. It's pretty crazy. It's insane. Congratulations. And you were the buyer of this, which I think is so cool to come full circle and be back here because I remember this garage and the owner had an extensive car collection. And he had a lineup of cars here. And he had a Chintanario Lamborghini over here on the front that was all carbon fiber. And it's cool to see that it's now a podcast. Yeah, YouTube studio. Yeah. How did you get your start to be able to buy a house like this? I'm going to go fast. And then when you find something you think your audience will care about, we can drill down. We'll stop right there. All right. So I did not grow up with money. I used to think I grew up poor. I did not. I have since seen poverty. But we were lower middle class.

So I didn't know anybody with money. I just didn't know how to think like a person with money. Nothing. I went to film school, graduated, thought I would get the three picture deal. I did not. And I found myself completely hopeless because I had no idea how to break into the industry. Which that is, like if I had to guess what the thing is that really makes me resonate with people, I can explain that moment.

You have big dreams, but you don't know what to do. Like, that's my sweet spot. And that was so, it induced such paralysis in my life that I know what that's like to be stuck there and for me it all happened pre-internet. So I just was like, what do I do? And so very long story condensed way down. I end up writing a screenplay, it gets made into a feature film. I was horrified by the results, but I had met these two very successful entrepreneurs. They said, you're coming to the world with your handout. If you want to control the art, you have to control the resources. So come with us and get rich. What was the film? Oh, God. It's called Brazen

Bull. Uh-huh. What was it about to give us the... Yeah. Thanks, Graham. I did say there was nothing off limits. And here we go. I just got this. So, yeah, no, it's fine. But it was about, so did you guys ever hear of the killdozer? No.

All right, this is a real thing. So everything I'm about to say is 100% true. Okay. There was a guy who had like a machine shop. And he had the people in the zoning committee come and change the zoning of his business. So he went out of business. And he was very angry that they changed the zoning. And so it takes him a year, but he builds what ended up being known as the killdozer.

And he basically takes a bulldozer, soups it up, puts armor plating on it. And then this guy, remember, this is all real. This guy then takes that bulldozer and destroys the homes and businesses of everyone on the committee. But he does it surgically. So if your house is in between two other houses, he didn't touch. either house and either side just demolishes them. Now, this is terrible. No one should ever do this, and you're in a very dark place if you do.

But if you kind of like a revenge tale, it was pretty gnarly. But the bad news is very negative punchline. He gets killed. So it's like his last stand, but ends up destroying all the stuff. And so I was like, let's make the villain of our story, that guy, but you can't use the real story, obviously. But that was the inspiration. And so Brazen Bulls about this guy that gets done wrong by people. He blames them for everything.

And so he lures them into a building that's empty. And we actually filmed it in L.A. in this empty building. And played by Michael Madsen, if you guys know who that is, a regular on the Quentin Tarantino circuit. And I thought it was a really cool idea. It just didn't execute well, which then got me obsessed with, you know, how do you do, how do you get control of that process? How much did you make from that? And how much did it cost to? Nothing.

So speaking of doing things for free, I wrote it for free because I wanted the experience. I wanted to get to know the producers and all that stuff. So I was like, yeah, sure. No problems whatsoever. But walking away from that, realizing, yo. Like, it's one thing to work really hard for free. Didn't care about any of that. But when it gets taken out of your hands and by my estimation made worse,

it just really made me want to control that process. That led me to needing to get rich. I thought it would take 18 months. It took 15 years, but it worked. And so that's how, again, in a very, very brief nutshell. Explain how it worked. What was the business that you started 15 years? Are you able to disclose the numbers on the film?

Like how much it cost? I actually don't know. How much it cost? It was super low budget. It's like a million dollars, something like that. And how much it made? I have no idea. Literally none.

so by that point I was crying let me ask what didn't you like the most about the film so storytelling is meant to elicit an emotion if you fail to elicit the right emotion from the audience at the right time you have failed the movie did not elicit the right emotion at the right time for and no I don't want to paint like my screenplay

was Shakespeare it was not the screenplay was probably meh at best but the movie didn't make it to meh So that discrepancy was frustrating. So when you're writing the screenplay, you know what you want the audience to feel at this moment. And because I'm actually more of a director than just a writer, so I knew how this was meant to be shot, like where you would need to put the camera, what you would need to get from the actors, all that.

And so I was on set every day, and it just wasn't happening. Got it. Tell us about that business that you started. What inspired it? Why did that? I was a tag alone. So it was created by these two very successful entrepreneurs, and it was a technology company called Awareness Tech. And they knew me as a filmmaker.

And so they'd seen me speak on film. And they were like, hey, we need a copywriter. Why don't you come and help us. But don't think of yourself as an employee. Think of yourself as a potential partner. And if you work hard enough and perform at a high enough level, we'll actually make you a partner. And they said that to everybody. And so I watched them make that pitch to 30, 40, 50 people.

no, it was just constantly. And that's how they would try to attract talent. But I took them seriously. And I worked like a fiend. I didn't ask for a raise for five years because all I wanted was equity. And so in the end, I got equity in the business. But by the end, I was so burnt out and so unhappy, because I was chasing money, that I went in and quit. And I was like, here's your equity back. I'm not going to cross the finish line. Can't keep doing this. At that point, the equity was worth about $2 million. And I'm like, this is just too miserable. longer would you have had to go to actually realize that equity? It never would have gotten there.

I know now, looking back on it. So at that time, it was just like... It would have been a good choice if I'd done that at 18 months, but I kept telling my wife, no, no, no, just another 18 months, another 18 months, another 18 months. And at six and a half years, she said, you're now damaging our marriage, because I would come home and say, don't even ask me about my day. And I don't want to talk about it. And when I would drive in, because this was in the Marina, Marina Del Rey, for anybody

familiar with SoCal. And it's one of the most beautiful places on earth. When I would drive in, it was like dark clouds would roll in, thunder and lightning. I was just so profoundly unhappy. What you hate about it? I hated that I didn't care about the product. I hated that I was in a very aggressive environment where people were outright cruel. Now, I will say it worked perfectly for me and it turned me into the person that I am now, so I'm actually grateful for it. But when you're doing all of that and you're suffering every day for something you don't believe in, just trying to chase money, and the act of it is absolutely hateful, it becomes very hard to get motivated to keep going in.

And so I needed to wall myself off, so I'd wall myself off. But that meant that my wife couldn't ask me about it. And so then that started to make her feel like she was sort of orbiting my life, but not actually a part of it. And so when she said, look, it's damaging the marriage. And for me, my marriage is my highest priority. So I was like, cool, then something has to change. And so we had a whole plan.

We were going to move to Greece, cut our expenses down to nothing. I was going to go and quit, give the equity back. And I was just going to go write the next great American screenplay, come back, get it made. And I go in and quit and give the equity back. And I'm driving home. And my partners call me on the phone. They're like, whoa, you caught us off guard, come out to dinner with us. go out to dinner with them, they're like, we actually feel the same.

What would it take for us all to keep working together? So we laid out what that would look like, and that thing ended up being Quest Nutrition. Whoa, Jack, how did we end up back at the studio? This is so weird. I have no idea, Graham. I have a feeling it's because we've got to talk about aura. I don't really wear a lot of rings here. But you know what?

You convinced me to try it out, and I got to say, I like it a lot. I check it every single morning. I check my sleep. And it's one of the things I didn't realize just how bad of a sleep. I was. You're a bad sleeper. I'm terrible. It's really bad. I started tracking every single night of sleep with the aura ring and it's been

incredible. I never thought that I would be opening an app this much, but every single morning, it's now the first thing I check. It's cool because all that data that you get from the app, you can actually use it to improve your sleep. So for example, for me, I noticed my sleeping was way more efficient when I wear earplugs. And I saw data in the app that

shows that. Yeah. So now I wear earplugs like every night. I also like how it stays charged for up to a few days. So I don't have to think about like charging it every single day. It becomes annoying. I could charge it once. It's good for a few days. I don't have to think about it.

I really like it a lot. I didn't think I would like it as much as I did. It's like that health app on your phone, but like way, way better. It's like you take that times 100 and you get one of these things. So if you guys want to check them out too, it would help out the channel tremendous. We got an affiliate link down below in the description. Try it out. Let us know what you think.

What's not to like? And I'm not a ring per. I don't like wearing rings. But I put this on. I do enjoy it. Okay. And with that said, you guys, let's get back to the podcast. Enjoy. Now, the irony of ironies is one of the promises that the three of us made to each other

was that we will never again chase money. And so once we stopped chasing money, we made just all the money in the world. It's crazy. And so it's one of those like just ridiculous cliches. How do you go from tech to quest nutrition? Dude, everybody thought we were crazy. Because we were going, at the time where it was like, that's how you make your money. This is like the height of, and this would have been 2009. So 2009, everybody in 10, tech, it's like popping off, we've recovered from the dot-com bubble, like this is where you know, Facebook is blowing up. There's just so much money.

Everyone's like, you're going to get out of that into manufacturing? What are you doing? But we had said, it's got to be something that we're passionate about. It has to be something that I know I'll fight for at 2 a.m. on a Friday night that I have a reason to be there other than money. And so I'd grown up in a morbidly obese family. So for me, and it was different for all three of us, but for me, it was about fighting from my mom and my sister.

And I was like, I want to make food that they can choose based on taste, and it happens to be good for them. And so at 2am and a Friday, which I always use that because that was real, I remember one time literally being under a wrapping machine with bloody knuckles trying to repair it because if we don't finish this batch, if the protein matrix gets cold, you lose it. And so every batch was worth $5,000. And we just couldn't afford it. And so I was like, we're staying here until this gets done.

I could spend 20 minutes just describing that moment. It's crazy. But anyway, that at that moment, when I asked myself, why am I doing this, that I would have a very profound and compelling answer. And so when I could think about my mom and my sister, I'm like, yo, you're going to do this. My sister ends up losing like 120 pounds. It was incredible. So it was awesome. And I had the emotional reason to keep fighting.

But because it was really coming from that place and we, look, we were very business savvy. They had been in business even longer than me. by that time I had been in business for almost a decade. It was like we had a lot of learnings under our belt. Three ultra-hardcore people that have been working together for a long time, very disciplined. But you put all that together. And I understood social media before virtually anybody else. My partner understood the nutrition just freakishly well.

And then my third partner, or sorry, my second partner, the third of us, was a literal Iowa farm boy. And so he knew how to build things. And so he was like when everybody told us that you were never going to be able to manufacture. this kind of bar, he actually re-engineered equipment so that we could. It was just nuts, man. So it was like all the right things at the exact right moment. But how do you go and start like, I see the why, like here's why I'm going to do this, but how do you even start doing something like that and like coming up with that concept of this is what we're going to have, this is what we're going to offer? Like, is it a great answer for you? So of everything you need to start with

a really crystal clear goal. Okay, so we want to end metabolic disease. Okay. big mission, but your goal is not clear enough until you know what to do with the next 15 minutes of your life. That's how I look at everything. All right. So my goal is to end metabolic disease. What's stage one? Don't try to change behavior. Try to leverage it. Okay, word. So I know people will eat junk food. Okay, so what if we can make junk food that leveraged all of the junk food science, but did it with ingredients that are actually good for you instead of bad for you? Cool. So we're going to need to understand the biomedical markers that we're going to look for. Like right now I'm wearing a glucose patch. We used to check our blood when we would eat our own product to see,

is it working, is it not working? Because we had a belief, and I still believe it to this day, the number one thing you should pay attention to is what is your glucose levels. If your glucose levels are constantly high, you're a diabetic. So it's like, and we know chronic inflammation, all that stems from that. So we just started working backwards on the problem, but you have to have these principles. That's why when you and I were talking in your interview, I'm always trying to distill, like, what's the principle? So I can abstract it from that moment and apply it to anything. So, all right, this is going to be a nutrition company? Cool. What are we trying to do? And metabolic disease. Why? Because my mom and my sister are struggling from this, I don't want them

to die any sooner than they have to, so it's deeply personal for me. What are the things that have gotten them there? They're choosing food based on taste. Could we get people to choose food based on taste and move them forward metabolically? Yes, we can. What are form factors people are already used to? A protein bar. Why hasn't anybody made this protein bar before? As we found out, it's because all of the The scaled up equipment had been engineered over 70 years with the use of high fructose corn syrup. Once you take the high fructose corn syrup out, because it will elevate your blood sugar, which defeats our whole purpose. Once you take that out, it won't run through the equipment anymore. So now you have to be willing to become your own engineers and you have to develop your own equipment.

It's crazy. And so at that moment where I'm sure a thousand other people had the same mission, one did the same things with the same beautiful reason, all that. but they got to the point where they had to engineer their own equipment. They were like, yeah, no. We had an Iowa farm boy. Or they knew what to do. They were willing to do it, but they couldn't get the word out to anybody else because they didn't understand what I understood,

which was that social media wasn't even called that back then, but it was going to change everything. And that I just wanted to build community. And I didn't know the word authentic back then in the way that we use it now, but that was my whole thing. I was like, guys, I don't want to be a slick marketer. I want to be who I am. Kept saying that.

I want to be who I really am. And so it was just like all the things that are cliche now, At the time, nobody was doing. And my background was filmmaking. So I knew how to make content. So now you've got a guy who wants to be authentic, who's trying to end metabolic disease, so our product is real,

leveraging this thing we now call social media, and knows how to create content. So it was just like all the dominoes fell just two years before they fell for anybody else. And so we were like a run. What was the startup cost? How did you fund that? So that we did very little.

So we got profitable off of $10,000. So from the software company, so we didn't burn the ships at the shore. We kept running the software company by day and making the protein bars at night. So we were doing that until the company was profitable. And then I was the first one to move over full time. And then my partners stayed there, kept their salaries. I dropped mine to next to nothing. And then started running Quest.

And then his Quest started making more money, I can start drawing more salary. And just did it that way. And then finally to scale up, we had to take a big risk. We sold the, we sold awareness tech and then reinvested basically most of that money into buying the equipment, because it didn't sell for that much, into buying the equipment to fund Quest. And so that's how we were able to do. What was your schedule like working the two jobs? And then also balancing a relationship.

Was she your wife back then? Yeah, she was. Yeah. So what was that money? 20 years. 20 years. It was awesome. So my wife, just to be a good wife,

when I was like, hey, we need somebody to help us ship the product. Can you just out of the living room just, you know, ship one or two orders a day? Yeah, yeah, of course, whatever you need. It's all good. And then one or two orders a day became one or two an hour, became one or two a second. And she just grew with us until we were doing $80 million in revenue. And then she was finally like, I hate this so much. This is not what I want to do with my life.

She's also a filmmaker. So then we moved her over into running the media division. And then she was the one that kicked off what has now become impact theory, which at the time was called Inside Quest. And so it was great. So our lives were coming together. She was no longer orbiting around me, found her own entrepreneurial chops, really, I mean, she was one of the founding team members. So was there from day one, helped build that. And then by the time that we exited Quest, she was like a full-blown entrepreneur at that point.

So it was her and I that started this with a small team of Belmont. believers and here we are. Got it. And how much time did it take and how much did it cost to go from an idea to an actual tangible product? At Quest? Yes, right. So it took us 18 months to come up with a formulation.

That would have cost, if we got profitable off of 10 grand, you probably dropped, I don't know, two or three grand into the formulation. That would have been our biggest single cost. And then it's just ingredients and stuff beyond that. But it took a long time. long time. I did not think it would take that long. What's crazy is, you know what your enemy is in food? It's water. I never would have guessed that. Now, to anybody that knows about food, they're laughing. I was going to say the FTAA for sure. The mold is going to, at least something you need to be shelf

stable. And so we didn't, to give you an idea of how green we were, we didn't even know that it was water that would cause it to mold. And we actually considered a marketing campaign of the first bar that rots to let people know, because this is before like organic was like a big thing. We wanted people to know this is like natural. Like it's not full of preservatives. And then we realized that's a terrible marketing message. Let's not do that. Rots after one week.

Yeah, which is sadly true. So we had to learn things like how you bind water and all that stuff. And so you finally got to a formulation that was shelf stable and then we were off to the races. So it was 18 months all the while you were still doing the copywriting stuff at the tech company as well. By then I was doing way more than that. At that point, by the end of my tenure there, I was the chief marketing officer.

Got it. Okay. And you said it was a few thousand dollars all the way until having the actual tangible product? Yeah. So it took us 10 grand to get profitable. So with that was all the early development, getting a food scientist to help us get the actual formulation, to buy the first really small batches of ingredients, all that. That's not much at all. No, no, no.

This is why I freak out when people are like, oh, you can't like start. because you have to have a ton of money. It's not true. I mean, look, $10,000, nothing just needs that. It is a lot. I get that. I'm not saying that it is easy. Right.

But I'm just saying it's not the instrumentable thing that people think it is. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa. Whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with a... Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero, more like Habinier, yes.

Save the everyday with Amazon. And then what about marketing to get your first ever customers? Were you selling just like family and friends? Or did you go to? You literally could not give them away. So you want to find out who's your ideal customer. And we were really focused on, I want my customer to be a walking billboard for the efficacy of the product. So we went to bodybuilders. Now that was never going to be. the only person that buys your product, not if you want to scale, you're going to go out to my mom and my sister, somebody that aspires to be in great shape. And so we went out to all those people and said, this is the first protein bar that isn't a candy bar in disguise. This is real. So eat it. Test your

blood. Look at your results. Like, don't take our word for it. Actually try it. And they were like, no way, no way. I'm not eating it. And so we would stand at events like the Arnold or the Olympia carnival barking. Free protein bars. The first bar is not junk in disguise. No way. No. would touch it. So it was like just getting that one or two people. And so they would try it the first day finally begrudgingly walking around the show. They're starving. It's in their bag. They're like, all right, I'll try this. They eat it. They'd come back the next day. Like, that's so good. There's no way that this doesn't have sugar in it. Like we're used to people scamming in line. We're like, dude, test your blood sugar. Look at it. Look at the ingredients. Try it. And so it just

spread like wildfire. People were like, oh my God, this is actually real. We had dietitians using it in people's contest prep. It's crazy. So now at every pool party around America, somebody would, you know, walk up to the guy with six-pack and say, what do you eat? He'd be like Quest. And so it was just like the most organic stuff. So we started doing what we called mirror marketing, which was, hey, everybody, we want to see, what are you cooking? Because people would use Quest product to cook to make crazy desserts. How are you cooking with it? Well, show us your physical transformation. And then we would just repost all their stuff. And so then they wanted to point people to be like, yo, look at my recipe or look at my transformation. This is just,

it was insane. And did you guys have a big marketing budget or was it mostly just word of mouth? Like the product was so good. Like Tesla, right? Like they don't have to have a marketing budget. Their stuff just sells itself and people market for them. Yes. And you need like Twitter or sorry, Tesla has Elon on Twitter where he's got a gazillion followers and he knows how to get that message out and to rally the community, we had Facebook, Instagram, before companies were using it. So we were showing that a brand could be effective on there by building community, celebrating your community, getting them to talk about it, making them the cool person that knows that indie band before anybody else.

And like, that was all of our credibility in the beginning. And then we made a really smart decision that at first everybody thought was crazy. I literally had to stand in a room and everyone, in the company took turns, this is literal, took turns pointing at me and saying, Tom, you're just being an asshole. And the whole thing was, I said we should go online first rather than go in stores. And so in the end, anyway, despite all of that, I win the argument and every but we try it. And that becomes the reason that we were able to keep high margins because we kept saying no to retailers for a year or more. We're not going to go into retail yet. And so many people

were walking in to a GNC or a vitamin shop saying, why don't you carry Quest that we were finally able to negotiate terms that gave us enough margin to really scale the business. How does that work to go into retail? Like, how do you get shelf space like that? And what are the terms like for the very beginning? Because it sounds like you were able to show the demand and then leverage that to a better deal. How does that do work?

Is that just like how much they pay you to? Well, so you have to build in all the different channels that you're going to be selling through. distributor, they're going to want 50% right off the bat, just plain and simple. But they may be selling to a retailer like Walmart that's going to want 50, 60% right off the bat. So it's like, how do you deal with both of those? Well, you probably don't, because your margins are going to go to virtually nothing if you have to sell to a distributor that wants 50 points. And they're going to sell to, and this is off retail, and they're going to sell to Walmart that's going to want their 50 point. It's like,

What do you do? So you try, like we did, and not use a distributor to get into key retailers like that. But that means you have to build out your own sales for us, on and on on. So anyway, you break your channels down. It took me a long time to even understand what a channel is. I don't know if you want me to go into that. But it's basically groupings of points of distribution. So Jims is a channel. Big box retailers like Walmart is a channel.

Okay. So you pick your channels. You pick your go-to-market strategy with those channels. And then you have to negotiate all of your deals by channels, in some cases by retailer. So typically, you're only going to have one distributor in a channel. You can get multiple, but it can get weird.

They're all jockeying for a position, and they can battle against each other, and you have to deal with all that. Anyway, I don't know how much of a treatise you want on that. You can keep pushing hard on that. But anyway, so you figure out what standard, and then how much can you deviate from standard based on your points of leverage?

We were holding back. We had huge demand in the different channels that wanted to use us. And so we were able to negotiate better deals so that we weren't giving up 50 points, that we were able to keep a richer cut in the beginning. And that helped a lot. I'm just curious, like, as a small, like, grassroots company, how are you able to compete with these other massive billion-dollar companies that are offering protein bars as well?

And were you nervous that they would just do exactly what you were doing? What did you do with that machine that you guys created? Did you patent it or something? You can't patent a recipe. So no, we did file for some patents on some of our equipment. Some of the other things we were doing, though, we thought we were better off not filing for a patent. We have to reveal how you're doing everything. So better, we thought, to leave it as a trade secret. So some things we just didn't do. We actually had corporate espionage where our competitors would send people to get a job at Quest so they could see how it was done and take it back. So you only have, say, an 18 to 24 month lead when you get that big. Because we were a rocket ship.

In five years, we went from not existing to being valued over a billion dollars. It was a crazy town. So people are going to wake up and be like, all right, you just ate all my market share. I have to figure out what the hell you're doing. So what was the other part of that question? How do you do it? Yeah, like especially in the beginning, right? Like how are you able to compete with these massive companies?

Okay. So I live by a mantra. there's always room for the best. So we were in a declining category. So when we first launched in 2010, the category had been declining for years and more entrants were coming in by the day. And so when we originally pitched the Quest bar, we had a distributor say, I need another protein bar like I need another hole in the head. And so he passed. Now, you can imagine as we became like the thing, he was not happy with his decision to have passed. And if you have something that is actually better than the competition and you market it better and you make the brand stand for something more, there's always a way to come from whatever deficit.

You have to be savvy. There's no doubt. You have to be able to make noise and get people to pay attention. But if the product actually does what you say and you know how to articulate what you do well, there's always a shot. I'm sure a lot of people always think like some of the challenges in growing a company like that would be finding distributors, getting the supplies necessary and all the legal stuff. For you, what did you and the other partners, obviously, find to be the most uniquely challenging barriers that you guys had to make through? All day.

That was the only time where I was like, oh, are we actually going to be able to pull this off? Because we got told by people that have been in the industry 30, 40 years, this bar cannot be made. And so we went around the world, China, all across the U.S., Canada, looking for equipment that would make our very peculiar what we call matrix. And we would stop their equipment. We'd just seize it up. And we started to think, maybe this really won't work.

And my partner was like, no, I think I know what to do, but you're going to have to let me cut apart this equipment that we spent all of our money on. And if it doesn't work, now we're screwed because we can't even sell back the equipment. Because at least if we don't cut it up,

we still sell it back. Right, right. We'll have failed, but we can sell it back. And so it's like, do or die moment. We're like, yeah, let's do it. And did, and it worked. And that gave us that first. And look, we ended up making far fancier equipment down the road once we understood why we had gotten it to work.

Then we could go to the other manufacturers and say, we basically need you to make us, you know, a piece of equipment like this with these tolerances and all that stuff. And it was funny because you'd walk around our facility. And it's like, oh, yeah, with that one piece of equipment, I could have bought a Ferrari, like a really nice Ferrari. And here I have this thing that slabs protein bars, but it worked out in the end. Now, what was your decision to sell? What was that like? Yeah, so we ended up being so successful that we now had options. We stopped agreeing on how to run the company and what the future was, but we didn't need to agree anymore.

And for me, I was always doing this to control the art so that I could, by that point, I thought of it as building a studio. And they knew that. And so I was like, you know, I think this is that time. What we've done is incredible. We can sell the company for a billion dollars. And let's do it. And so at that point, I do not speak for them. I can't tell you what was inside their heart and soul.

But it was an amazing 14-year journey as partners that had run its course and gave me and Lisa a chance to spin out the media side of quest, which is pretty weird to have a media company. inside of a protein company to spin that out into a standalone company. And part of the, what I saw as the future that we couldn't all agree on was I was like, brands have to step forward and say what their values are. You need to be able to see the person, create content around who you are as a company, what you stand for, all of that. And so I had originally started impact theory back there called Inside Quest, but basically the same show.

And I was like, this is really the future. future. That content is going to be such an important part of what brands do. And so when we were like, you know, I don't think it didn't match their vision for what they wanted to do. I just said, cool, let me spin it out, do a standalone company. And we're off to the races. What did they want at the time? Was it to try new products and just go heavier into the marketing side? It would be very unfair for me to try to characterize what they wanted to do. But I will say that, it didn't involve media in the way that I saw it. So I really thought we need to, and look, it sounds counterintuitive. I totally get it. We need to invest more money into media. We need to be doing more strange things in our marketing to get a broader audience.

I wanted broader appeal. I wanted people using it as a transformation tool. I wanted to create documentaries around the transformations and sponsor athletes that were you know, doing crazy things. And so how much of that they liked, didn't like, don't know. I will say on balance, it was definitely not a fit. I felt very strongly in one direction. They felt very strongly in the opposite direction. And it was like, okay, do we battle this out? Does one of us compromise in a pretty big way? Or do we just say, this has been amazing and part ways now when it's amicable and go each do our own thing? How does a buyout even work at that point?

Does a larger company just absorb everything? Is it just your share that gets purchased? Like, what's the process like? So what ended up happening was we said, okay, this is the value that I brought to the company. You freeze that in time and say, cool. If this, whatever, anything that you get over where I'm at, that's yours. I'm not there to build it. That seems very fair to me.

As it turned out, we sold basically at that same value. so it didn't end up mattering. They didn't stay too much longer after I left. But that was the deal. If they had taken it for the next 15, 20 years and built it, you know, into a $3 trillion business or something, that would have been all theirs. But yeah. Can you share what your take-home was after selling?

In terms of how much I walked away with raw dollars, I will say that it's, it was nine figures. Doing the math. Okay. Counting zero. It was in the nine figures. somewhere. It was in the nine figures. And I'm just so curious, and it's such a stupid question, but you sell a company for a billion dollars. Do you just get like a check or like a deposit?

They literally just deposit it in your bank account. You're kidding. It's surreal. What bank account did you have? This would have been at Chase. This is just a Chase account with nine figures in it. Yeah, it's crazy. And what about taxes? You pay them. You pay them. I've paid a very painful amount of tax for living in LA. We were talking about why I'm trying to sell my house because I just don't think the way California's going with tax makes any sense. So, yeah, but I'm a big pay. I love America. I'm here to pay my taxes, so I have paid tax.

And I'm not savvy like you, man. I don't try to be clever. Like, I just fucking pay taxes. What was it like, though, looking at your bank against, seeing nine figures? That's crazy. Need a vehicle that isn't afraid to make a splash? That's the Volkswagen Touse. Capable and confident.

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Visit vw.ca to learn more. SUV, German engineered for all. What was the most amount of money you'd had in your bank prior to that point? By that point, I was making a pretty good salary and had been for a few years. So, low six figures? Low six figures?

So like a couple hundred thousand? Yeah, yeah, yeah. To a hundred plus million. Oh, people don't understand. I was worth over $100 million, probably over $200 million, and I was driving a beat-up Ford Focus with a leaky exhaust

and was borrowing rides off of my employees when my wife needed the car. It was hilarious. What was your rent or mortgage? at the time. Were you just frugal in every facet of life? Yeah, so we had really, we had a, it was a nice enough house. Don't get me wrong, for that period of my life, I was very excited. So nobody, while there were times in my life where I was in a very small apartment,

by the time Quest is thriving, we're in a nice, you know, middle class house. And we had to put it up as collateral, so it was at risk. But we had a decent house, but we stopped going out. We sold, because obviously we had two cars. But when we started Quest, we had to sell it so that we could cut our expenses back to nothing. So I went from making like 150K down to making 50K. And with the house on the line and all that stuff. And yeah, we just scrimped and scraped and our mortgage was manageable.

And quite frankly, I rolled the dice a bit. And it paid off looking back now I wouldn't because I had an adjustable rate mortgage and had Quest not been successful. I would have gotten obliterated. So got a little bit lucky with that. And yeah. And being worth so much, why were you frugal? Is it just rooted in your DNA? You don't have expensive taste?

I was, we're in this house. So like to say that I don't have expensive taste, be a bit stupid. But I only have expensive taste for a house. I don't, the house is a piece of art that you can live in. So I've always had a thing. Like I got hardwired for houses being a representation of wealth. and my whole life as a kid, I just wanted to be rich. Because I was, again, I wasn't poor now that I understand what real poverty is,

but I thought of myself as poor. So the whole time growing up, couldn't have all the things that I wanted. I've been working full-time summer jobs since I was 12. To get a Nintendo, I had to work in a door factory. Nobody should cry for me. But like, as a 12-year-old, you feel a bit hard done by. So I'm like, yo, when I get older, I am going to get rich. And so every time I visualized that, it was the big house and all that.

And then once I got the big house, I was like, I don't need fancy things. So I, the average thing that I buy is manga, so it's like $9. So that's it. I don't wear fancy. Most some of my clothes, I guess, that I bought a few years ago. I went through a fancy phase. But almost all my clothes are bought on Amazon. Your pants look expensive.

They're not. Dude, I bought these on Amazon for like $40. Did you buy that yourself? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I have a particular style that I like. In fact, I am wearing the culmination of what I was going to say. So my pants, I bought on Amazon for $40. And my shirt, though, I bought in Tokyo. So I'm a psychopath for Tokyo tech wear. So as often as I can, I will go to Tokyo and shop in their districts. And so I'm an anime junkie. And so this was like a collaboration of like this little boutique shop in Tokyo that did this master. up with my favorite anime, which is Neon Genesis Evangelion. So anyway. So, yeah, I don't have super expensive taste beyond the house, but the house is so ridiculous that it feels absurd to say that I don't have expensive.

Would it have deterred you from buying that shirt if it was five times they cost? No, no, no, because, I mean, look, I have a limit. Got it. So, for instance, I almost never fly private. And everyone thinks I'm out of my mind. But every time I think about flying private, like to go international as like $100 to $150,000, one way. So I'm just like, that's an employee for a year and a good employee for a year. I don't care enough to fly private. I'll fly first class, so that matters. But the gap between first class

and private is astronomical. So I could afford it, but I never do it. So there's just, I think of everything in terms of what I can do with the money, because I'm trying to build a studio. I'm trying to build the next Disney. So my ambition is still so much bigger than my net worth. No matter how big your net worth is. Hollywood wipes out like Saudi princes, right? So as much money as I have, I don't have Saudi Prince money. So it's like, I know better. I know what this game is like.

I know how it's played. I know how quick you can lose hundreds of millions of dollars. So that's not my game. So I'm making sure that we can play the long game here. So when you got that nine figures in your account, what was going through your mind at the time? And how do you divvy that up in terms of what you're going to do with it to make it last?

I am not thoughtful like that. I have way too high risk tolerance. So that would be a great question for my wife. So I would legitimately bet everything on building the next Disney and grind myself down to no dollars left in my bank account if that's how it came down. And would have no heartburn, whatever, I wouldn't feel weird about it at all. Because as I'm trying to get people to understand, once you have the knowledge, you can remake the money. So there is no point in my life where I will ever struggle to make two, three million dollars a year. I could go to any Fortune 500 company if I wasn't going to start my own and say, look, this is what I know, this is what I've done.

I'll work for free for three months. By the end of it, they will pay and give equity. So I have no fear. I will forever live whatever lifestyle I want to live. So my thought is just I need to protect my wife who does not. share my same like, I just want to build this next thing. I care deeply about that next thing. My wife very much feels, she's willing to take risk up to a point, but she feels like, look, we sacrificed for so many years. We finally made it. And if we're not reckless, we never have to

worry about money again, even at a very high lifestyle. So I'm, yeah, I think about her far more than I think about myself. But we obviously run things here based on a budget. And so I know. if everything goes wrong, how much would I lose for the year? How many years could I afford to do that before? Because I feel a tremendous responsibility to the team. Yeah. How did you meet your wife? All right.

You guys are asking like the greatest hits. I love these questions. Okay, so my wife and I are a Me Too story, so get ready for your channel to be canceled. I was teaching. My wife was my student. And it was a school for adults. I want to be very clear about that.

I was teaching filmmaking. And she was 21 at the time. And she saw me at my best. And it was amazing. And we hit it off right away. And when I met her, I had recently learned how to be good with women because I was terrible up into that point.

And truly... How do you learn? Oh, it's really simple. You must be willing to walk away. And you must be worthy. I don't know your audience well enough. I'm going to give you the truth. You can edit it out if you want.

truth. We'll leave it in. Here is the reality. Think about, just hold it in your mind for a second, what sex really is, okay, the messy reality of what sex is. You have to go from hi, my name is, to that. To do that, you must be worthy of that. Now, you might be able to trick him into doing it once, but I've gotten my wife to do that for 22 years. You have to be worthy. So one, you have to be worthy. Two, you have to have confidence, meaning you recognize your worth. And because you recognize your worth, you're going to act completely as you are who you are, because it does not make sense to get somebody into a relationship that's not going to work. So broadcast who you are and be willing to walk away.

So if you are worthy of someone inviting you into their body, and that that is an amazing, incredible moment that you guys can share, and it's your real partners in that act, because I'm very much not alike. Don't get with somebody that you can dominate and push around. Get with somebody who is your equal. we can go into that as much as you want at very strong feelings but you want to do that and you need to understand that you have that worth that you've done the work that you're good at something that matters and then that you don't need that person and that even if you feel like you need that

person and they're the only one for you and all that the second you act like that they will become elusive you'll never get them and you can't tolerate the friend zone or anything like that like I'll give you an example. I never had to say this to my wife. But if I had thought I was sliding into the friend zone, I would just say like, hey, if I'm not what you're looking for, totally respect that you are lovely. And I wish you the best in everything. I'm not interested in the friend zone. All the best to you. And, you know, if I can be a reference or whatever, let me know, but this is where we part ways. And at that point, and I am very good at this, I would flip a switch in my mind and I would never think about that person again. You just, you have to. How long did it

take you to develop that sort of mindset though 23 years really and what was there an event or an inflection point where you're like oh god it if you want to get good at something find somebody who's already good at that go to them and ask them what do you do beg for the absolute truth and then when they tell you believe them i went to george leonardopolis george got laid left right and center and i said george is he greek he is he is he like a famous guy or something not at all now he's just greek man and uh They're naturally, like, very charismatic. Bad news is George was very charismatic and very good looking.

Did he have an accent, though? He did not. He grew up in America, so he didn't have that going for him. But very charming. And I said, George, what's the secret? Because I am terrible with women. And he said, oh, you just have to be a dick to them. And I wanted to bang my head on the table.

And I was like, one, I know him, and he isn't a dick. So he's saying something, and it's so cliche. So finally, I was like, I'm not. going to reject this because the guy I know that is the way that I want to be with women is telling me that that's a secret he's telling me in sincerity he's wrong but he's telling me sincerely so what does he actually mean and then I realized oh he's always himself and he's willing to walk away and I was like that's so interesting and so he isn't like oh what do you want what do you like which then just puts you in this like you're there to to placate them

Yeah, like it just makes you, okay, I'm just going to say the real words. You, in my estimation, if you want to be good with the typical female, you need to be self-assured, confident, strong, very good at something that they care about, and you need to embody all of that. And then you need to be wildly interested in who they are, make them feel better about themselves when they're around you than when they're not. and them feel like, whoa, this person really lifts me up, but they're honest and they tell me the truth and they don't ever pull punches. And if they say something that I don't like, I'm going to let them know that I don't like that.

Very calmly, but just, hey, I like this. I don't like that. And I was shocked at how intoxicating the woman who is now my wife and she will be the first to tell you that it didn't work only on her. I had had a chance to test this out before meeting her and realize. It was night and day. Could not get laid. Flip a switch. Very successful with women.

And I was laughing. I was like, I can't believe this is true. And then flashing back on my life, there was this girl that I really liked in high school. And she used to always say, when we're not dating, you're super cool. And the second we're dating, you're not yourself. And I couldn't understand what she meant. And so then I played it back. And I was like, oh, my God, it's because I had fear of loss.

And so when we weren't dating, I had fear of loss because we weren't together. So it was just who I am. That would get her attracted. we would date, and then because I liked her so much, I had fear of loss. So I started trying to act the way I thought she wanted me to act. But then I'm not interesting. There's no sort of power in that. There's just someone supplicating themselves to you.

It's just not interesting. That's interesting. So by flipping that switch, everything in my life changed. Now, I've only told one woman that I loved her. I've been in a committed relationship for 22 years. So if anybody thinks they hear me saying I'm a Lothario or a playboy, that's not my life at all. But I am telling you that it is a game of psychology. And if you don't play it well, you will lose.

And so all the guys out there right now that are losing, it is 100% their fault. It is not society. It is nothing other than you do not understand the psychology of the person that you're sitting across from, that you're trying to effectively sell yourself to. And because I took the time to actually figure out what that is, the complexities. Because right now you hear red pill shit, be dominant. They're your property. Oh, the really terrible advice.

Find a partner. Find somebody who can challenge you, but be yourself. Challenge them. Be worthy. Be good. Push yourself every day. Be aggressive. Be hardcore.

Try to take up as much space as you can. Try to mansplain anything that you're passionate about. Like don't be hesitant at all. And then shut up and make sure that you're giving them that space and you're drawing that out of them. And you show how much you respect them and how interested you are in them and find somebody you actually care about

so that this isn't a game. And then just be open and honest and it's incredible. My wife is my equal in every conceivable way on balance. But there are things that I'm way better than her at and in those moments I lead and there are things that she's way better than me at and in those moments I follow.

And because I can do both of those, but I am not at all afraid to take the lead, then you get an interesting dynamic. How has your dynamic changed over 20 years? Oh, brother. So when she became an entrepreneur, that was the rockiest period in our life. Because she had been a stay-at-home wife for eight years. So I had somebody that cooked for me, clean for me, took care of our puppies, laid my clothes out, literally.

My clothes would be laying at the end of the bed. So my gym clothes would be set out. My work clothes would be set out. I did not have to think of anything. She sorted at all. All of our personal things, flights, trips, family. My mom was going to get a birthday gift. It's just all sorted out.

I don't have to think about anything. And then she started thinking, hey, maybe I actually like this entrepreneur thing. And then it was like, you know, she was stepping into a far more aggressive personality type, like really starting to feel her own and getting involved in areas of business that had been sort of my domain and the space that made me feel cool. And that was a hard thing to navigate. And so what I told her was, you have to give me the opportunity to mourn. And so because the relationship I thought we were going to have where you were going to be my wife,

we're going to have kids, you were going to stay at home, take care of the kids, that's gone. I don't get that anymore. And that was the thing that we got married based around. So let me more than that. But I want you to be whoever you want to be. And it would violate my value system. If I respond to in any way other than, I want to help you become the best version of yourself the way that you define it. And so we've got all kinds of standard operating procedures rules.

of engagement that it would take me a long time, but I'm happy to answer anything on that, about how we ended up making that work, how we did a transition period where she slowly, over like a week or two weeks, weaned me off of, okay, I'm setting out some of your clothes, not all of them. I'm making some of your meals, but not all of them, down to, okay, now you're self-sufficient. We divide, you know, the different work that has to be done, all that stuff. And it's absolutely incredible. But you then, if you're doing things that are overlapping, you have to be very thoughtful about who has more expertise in one area over the other.

You should always listen to each other. You should want disconfirming evidence. But if you can't agree on something, you have to have a rule of engagement around what are you going to do when you can't agree. So for instance, I am the right person between the two of us to be the CEO. She will be the first to admit it. So when we founded the company, I and my act of making sure that she feels what she needs to feel, which is that I believe she is my equal and she is my partner and she is my priority.

The lawyer said, look, you need to split the company 51%, 49%. We don't care who has 51% and who has 49, but to avoid a legal nightmare, you must do that. And Lisa was like, Tom will take 51%. And I was like, over my dead body. We are 50-50 equal partners. Make the ultimate divorce nightmare. I have failed if I don't have enough influence over her that I can navigate this process. And I'm so confident that I want what's good for her and will sacrifice half of my shit to make sure that her life is good.

Why would I ever do that? I also know who she is, barring head trauma. She's never going to ask for more than half of the business. I'm just utterly convinced of that. And so make that the nightmare. But, wife of mine, let's be very clear. If we ever collide on an idea and you can't convince me and I can't convince you, which we will both try very, very hard. and we will respect each other and really listen and really talk.

But if after all of that, we can't agree, we will go with my idea every single time. Are you okay with that? Yes. Cool. Then we can march forward. Now, if in that moment I had been like, oh, well, I think, how do you feel? Like, that's never going to work. Because the reality is I'm not willing to do this if that isn't true, because I am the right person to make those decisions.

So you have to have the clarity. of knowing when you're the right person. You have to have the historical track record of, oh, I follow you. Whenever you're the right person, I back off. You know that in your bones. You know that I listen. You know that I'm not saying this from ego. I'm saying this from we recognize what each other's skill sets are and that happens to be mine. So anyway, getting to that high level communication, that's what people have to be able to do. And every day, pushing yourself to be a better version of yourself, like that shit is hard. But if you do that for 30, 40 years, you can be in real beast mode. But growing together is the hard part because things are going to change. And if

you can't navigate those moments well, you're in trouble. And you didn't ask this, but I have one more. This is on my mind recently. No, I'm so into this. Keep going. So there's one more thing that people really have to be thoughtful about. There is a reason that so many marriages break up around the 25-year mark. I always thought it was because they had kids and that's when kids leave the house. Now, I'm sure that can be a big thing that breaks up marriages for sure, but my wife and I don't have kids. And we have found our marriage isn't in danger, but we found this new thing that we're colliding over that I'm like, oh my God, I see how this plays out in a couple that doesn't have the tools that we have. What ends up happening is over time, so you should marry

somebody that has a different worldview than you. You don't want somebody that thinks the same as you. You want someone with the same values. You do not want somebody that thinks the same. So my wife and I come at things very differently. I see how things could work. She sees how things will break. That has made us an incredible pair. So we each have these worldviews. And over time, life kicks you in the face. You learn a lesson and your worldview refines and it gets more robust and it gets more robust. But remember, you each have different worldviews, but they're becoming more solidified over time. So now 25 years into your relationship, you've got dramatically different worldviews and you know that your worldview is right. And so now you've got these two worldviews

start clashing all the time. And you can't break them out of it. I just tweet it out about this today. You have to be very careful. You can't want people to think the way you think because otherwise your worldview will solidify and it will become in prison. And so what happens is life teaches you

the way you approach the world is right. The way you invest is right. The way you run your YouTube channel is right. Look at all your success. Now imagine that going for 25 years. Now you're just like, I'm right. Like, I don't know what you want me to say? Like this works, man.

all my success, everything that we've done, it's right, it's right, it's right. But you have different worldviews and you both believe they're right. So unless you are hungry to find that area where, oh, okay, I can't argue from the place of I'm right and you're wrong, but we both have to argue from the fact that I believe I'm right, I feel right. And getting my solution, my way, will yield what I want. And the same is true for you. So now we're colliding over something where it's not that you're wrong.

This gets very complicated. You can't even see what I'm thinking and feeling. You hear all the words, but you don't see the world through my distorted mirror. You see the world through your distorted mirror. So I can't see what you're saying because I don't see the world through your distorted mirror. So now you have to go, okay, we're both smart people who love each other. We're colliding. We each think the other person is crazy, which is why you're getting upset.

Because you think, how can you live life like that? It's so ridiculous. So you're like, okay, at this moment I have to say, even though I really, really believe. that you would be better off doing things my way. Like, I can steal man your argument. I can tell you what your argument is. This is not confusion. Even though I can do that, I think you're crazy.

And I don't want to do it that way. You have to have a rule of engagement for how do we approach this problem. And this is where most people break. Because in that moment, you're going to have to do something suboptimally. And your marriage has to be the thing you want to protect the most. Because oftentimes my wife and I will collide or something around the business. So now she can be fucking with millions of dollars. And I have to be willing to lose that money to protect my marriage

because I'm going to have to compromise to some point on certain things. It gets complicated because I know that first thing I said. If we disagree, it's always going to be my idea. But hey, you've got to contextualize if you're beating someone to death all the time, all the time, all the time, you're just going to demotivate them. So even though by agreement, I could, it's not wise. And I want this to get too complicated. So you have to be willing to compromise.

there may be real consequences to that compromise, and you have to want that marriage, their ability to have high self-esteem and to feel loved and appreciated and to feel like you're equal, you've got to want that for them so badly that you will compromise on some of the things you want, and they have to be willing to do the same.

If you can do all of that, it's everything, man, because there are going to be moments where, I would just tell you, a person loving you and going to bat for you and being there for you and the ups and the downs and helping you think through the hardest problems and not judging you when they see you at your worst, that is so much better than money.

There's nothing, nothing. I've tried it all. There's nothing better than that, at least if you're hardwired like I am. So my understanding is that for conflict resolution between a married couple that's been going on for a while, the best thing is to acknowledge

and to be mindful that there is a distorted window. for yourself and for the person. Absolutely critical. There is no objective right and wrong, which we can get into. I'm going to give you a quick hypothesis. I'm not sure I'm right about the reason yet. I know I'm right about the symptom. I don't know if I'm right about the cause. There's a guy named Donald Hoffman who believes that all of the world is basically a computer interface. And if you think about reality as being the electrical switches that are either on or off, that's the reality of a computer. That's the reality of sending an email. That's the reality. of playing Grand Peptado, but you don't interface with it like that. You send an email by click clacking on a keyboard to make little words appear on the screen, but what's really happening is electrical circuits going on and off really fast to process zeros and ones, okay? That's too complicated. So his belief is that we evolve to have this user interface and now we're just dealing with the world to the user interface. If he's right and it feels like, even though it may not be literally true, the outcome makes that feel like

it's true. Then you know, my distorted mirror is really just my version of that interface. It doesn't represent what is real, objectively. We're not at the laws of physics level. So since I know that I'm not dealing with the on and off, I'm just dealing with an interpretation of it, it becomes much easier to have this conversation of, I just recognize that my worldview is an abstraction. So everything I believe is not it's not literal truth. I'm just dealing in the realm of psychology, what we can call symptoms of whatever the underlying thing is. That has helped me a lot to get out of my own way to not be like, well, I know I'm right that this really is a black coffee mug where my wife's like, it's gray, what are you talking about? It's blue. It's like you start to realize, yeah,

that might actually be how it's represented for you with your computer interface or your distorted me or to stick with one metaphor. And so that becomes easier to stop thinking, I'm right and therefore we need to do what I say. When did you start thinking that way? This is going to surprise you in terms of the answer. When I was 14-15,

I really wanted to be good with girls, and I wasn't. And so that began a very long journey of what is it that I have to learn to get good? That led me to reading Cosmo Magazine, which led me to thinking about women through a psychological lens.

And then my mother gave me the best piece of advice. Your audience is going to be very surprised by the term this interviewer is taken. My mom gave me the best piece of advice around women that I've ever gotten to this day. And she said, women need to trust you in order to have an orgasm. And I was like, what, I'm sorry? Like the thought, probably 15, 16. And so I was just like, trust doesn't even enter into the equation for me. I don't even need another name.

So that was so strange. And it just made me go, whoa, I'm having one experience, one frame of reference over here. But for somebody else, it is such foreign territory that I have to begin to understand what is true. And so that put me on this quest that led me to neuroplasticity, the human ability to improve. All of this stuff ends up paying dividends because for a long time, I didn't think I'd ever be successful. I didn't think I was smart enough. I didn't realize that you could get better. I had a fixed mindset, all this stuff.

So all these little pieces start coming together with the Tao Te Ching. Long story. So I start cobbling this idea together that you can step outside of your frame of reference, which I wouldn't have known to call it that then. And more thought of it as different brains see the world in different ways. And if you can understand how they see it, then you can find a way to translate. Well, this is how I feel. But I need to translate it.

into your language to make you feel what I want you to feel. So something my wife and I talk a lot about, it doesn't matter what you say, matters what the other person understands. So to get to that, then you have to go, oh, well, the female brain is very different from the male brain. I understand that's highly controversial, but I'll just tell you, real life's going to slap you in the mouth, if you want to argue that point. And so by embracing that, and so how do you define truth? It'll be an easy way. Truth is, if I believe it and act as if it were true, does my prediction engine work or break? When I look at the world with the assumption that the female brain is different in very specific and predictable ways, I can predict the outcome of my actions, bouncing off my

wife, just as an example, better than if I assume she views the world in the same way that I do. If I group women into a rough group and I make predictions about my behaviors and the response I will get from them based on putting them in a group, of course, huge distribution. We have way more in common than we have separate. We're compared to other things. We're basically the same. if you have, if you operate with that, you'll find that your prediction engine is way better at predicting outcomes. And so the more you get into steering your life by, I believe this thing to be true. Any, it's a hypothesis. Scientific method tells me any hypothesis makes a prediction. If that prediction holds true, then the hypothesis becomes a thesis. So I'm just constantly trying to get my best guess,

which is my hypothesis, tested to see if the predictions it makes actually are true. true. And when they are, then I upgrade that thing to a thesis. I never say it's fact or it's true largely because of the Donald Hoffman problem. So I'm constantly looking for that disconfirming evidence that will give me a better way to perceive what's happening. So my prediction engine will be even better. And so you refine and refine. Let's say you're in a relationship with the girl for a couple of years. How do you know that this is the one that you should spend the rest of your life with? Like what are the pillars to a successful marriage? I asked Alex and Lela Hormosey this question. They gave me a very similar.

answer to what I thought the answer was, and I want to know your opinion. Yeah. So what you're looking for is shared values, but complementary worldviews. So again, to give the example between Lisa and I, I'm a move towards something. Lisa's largely move away. I look and see opportunity no matter what. I'm very, I don't mind risk at all. And Lisa is more risk-averse. She sees how things could break. She's about systems and process. And so when you put us together, once we realized that we needed to value the tension between the two of us and that it's what makes a kite work,

you need a kite and a string. If you have just the kite, the wind will blow it into nothingness, it will crash, land in a tree, end up on the ground, whatever. If you have just a string, it lays on the ground. But you have a kite and a string, the dynamic tension between the two, if they both respect each other,

now it can keep that kite aloft. So she's a string, I'm the kite. Neither of us are useful without the other, but we have core values that are the same. So for both of us, our marriages are number one priority. We have certain views around family, communication, what to pursue, not pursue. So just a lot, a lot of shared values. So look for that. And then, because I am such a huge love junkie, I think you want to look for somebody that makes you feel like there's no way that two people have ever felt like this before. At the beginning, you have to understand that the neurochemistry that's going to change over time.

but that moment of like, yo, I'm so into this person, because if you're not into that person, because it will get hard. And when you ask yourself, why am I with this person? If you don't know, you're in trouble. And then the last thing I will say is I highly recommend, especially the men, to do some sort of ritualistic scarification. So it could be as simple as a tattoo. That's what I did. But you want to, it only work for me because it's the only tattoo I have. I'm not like a tattoo guy. If you're a tattoo guy, it's not going to work. But you want to do something permanent that will remind you you are a different person before you get married than after.

So immediately after getting married, I took a tattoo that I designed and gave to my wife as a wedding present and got a tattooed. And the whole time I did it, I wanted to focus on the pain, wanted to focus on the permanence and that I was doing this specifically to be a different person at the end of this. It came from a book called The Power of Myth where he talks about one of the reasons he thought that so many marriages fell apart is there's no meaningful ritual that deep. Mark Hates, single life from married life. And so then I did a lot of things around really thinking about my willingness to die for my wife and all of that. And so just spending an inordinate amount of

time thinking about that. My wife and I never even joke about divorce. We don't even say that word in our house. We call it the D word. So there is no exit. It's there, look, there are things. Neither of us would stay in an abusive or loveless marriage. But it's our job to make sure that it never gets there. And we have a lot of tools and tactics to make sure that we don't get there. But it should be the most amazing thing in your life, bar none. I would love to continue talking about that, but I definitely think we should probably get back to the sale of Quest because that's also, I mean, that's why we're here to talk about your fantastic journey as an entrepreneur. I do want to say this. I am a huge fan of Quest.

I got put on. Shout out to Eric from Tri-Carrot. Do we have chips here? Do we have chips here? There are chips over there. I noticed him. I didn't want to open them because you were shooting with before and I was like, this is going to be the loudest thing if I open up this bag of chips. But I got to say, right now I'm on two packs a day. Nice. Yeah, I'm on two packs of quest chips a day, you know? I can stop whatever I want, I swear I can't.

But I love them. They taste so good. They're really healthy. I put my housemates onto them, and lovely. So let's talk about after the sale. So I'm just so curious. It's kind of like winning the lottery then again with a ton of effort. What did you do the day after the sale?

Were you just completely absolved of all of your work that you had been doing for Quest? And you were just like free to do whatever you'd like with your time? So we took money in two stages. So the first stage was we took a small investment, but at the price it was absolutely massive. So that was the like clicking refresh on my banking app button like, oh my God. And now we're worth so much money. That was that moment. Ended up making even more money the second time.

But by then it was like it was already very wealthy. And so it didn't have the same like pizzazz. But the first time, it was really important to me that I was at work, on time, went in, did my thing. No one at Quest knew when the money hit because it was like, I'm here to build something. I'm on a mission. I'm not worried about that. Then the second time, I had already been out of the company for two years, I think, before like the final sale, sale, finished. And then the second tranche of money hit.

So, yeah. By then I had, I literally, we wrapped Quest on a Monday and started Impact Theory on Tuesday. So I didn't take time off, didn't take a vacation. Like for me, it, it, I stopped chasing money eight and a half years into my journey. So it was not about the money. Work ethic means a lot. I think that people should steer in life by how you feel about yourself when you're by yourself. And so when I was going to be alone, I knew I'd want to say the day the money hit my account,

I worked just like any other day. And so, yeah, that... You didn't buy anything lavish? So I did end up buying something from my wife, but I didn't buy anything for myself. What'd you get her? We got her cool piece of jewelry, which now I don't even remember if it was a bracelet or a necklace, whatever.

That wasn't super meaningful to me. But, and because she had worked so hard, it wasn't even like I was buying her or something. It was like she had earned that money too. So, like, there was no sort of cool, romantic moment in that for me. I think there was for her because that was like her, like I'm a bad bitch moment. Like I did this. I can buy this myself.

Like I earned this. And so that was really cool for her and really meant something for her. But for me, it was about I show up to work in the same way despite having the money. And why do you do this podcast? I'm just curious because you have a ton of money. You made a ton of money. You don't necessarily need to be making more money from this podcast, I'm assuming, right? I'm sure it's expensive to keep this house going on and everything.

But what is the purpose behind this? Okay, so that is a very detailed answer. So I'll give it to you in a nutshell if you want to push in on anything we can. So first and foremost, you need to make a self-sustaining economic engine. So I'm trying to build the next Disney. I'm never just going to be able to fund that forever, right? So Disney's a behemoth, billions of dollars. So I need to build a company that makes money.

And the great news is I can self-fund it for years and get it going and get it off the ground to husurists, all that because of the very fortunate position that I'm in. But ultimately, Impact Theory has to make money. The second reason was, even before I left Quest, I knew that I have a magic trick. And that magic trick is I can explain very complicated ideas and make them accessible to people. And I was like, I'm going to go from being the protein bar guy to building a Hollywood studio. No one's going to take me seriously. No one even knows who I am. So I'm just going to be another rich schmuck trying to make movies. I'm like, that's not going to work. So my thesis was, if you put me in front of the camera, I can go impact millions of people's lives. And so when I want to sell

something to Netflix, I can say to my community, hey, I'm going to be at Netflix pitching this idea, and 5,000 people will show up in the parking lot and be like, yo, I'll watch anything that impact your remakes. And that would be huge. And then my second thing was, some of the people in that community are also going to be executives at these studios, and they'll let me come in and pitch just because my contact, my content has impacted their lives, which has already happened, and we've had some really amazing opportunities come from that. And then the third thing is that what we really need is to find all the talented writers, directors, and things that I just need to broadcast, be able to tell people what we're up to so that they'll see that, they'll understand what we're all about,

and they'll want to come be a part of this. And so getting eyeballs and what you're doing is really, really, really important. The only part of this that didn't work out was I also thought that people would go, oh, Tom, I watch all your videos are amazing. The comic books you're doing, those are about empowerment too. Yeah, I'm going to read comics. It doesn't work like that. You're either a comic reader or you're not, and you need to approach people with comics or TV shows, whatever, in a totally separate way. So we're actually now bifurcating the company. So it'll be impact theory and impact theory studios. They will have their own identities. They'll be philosophically aligned. But if you go to Impact Theory Studios, it would be like landing on Disney. You'd

see characters, animation, cartoons, video games, that stuff. And you wouldn't see the shows, the university, all of that. And then also, the only reason that I'm doing all of this, everybody needs meaning and purpose. That's critically important. And I knew that going and retiring and being a rich guy on a beach somewhere was never going to make me happy. So I wanted to make sure that I could show up and fight for something every day. And so what was going to be that thing that I could fight for. And the answer for me was, I took myself from scrounging and my couch cushions to find enough change to put gas in my car. It's a real story to selling a company for a billion dollars. And I was like, I'm not smarter than the next person, but I have built a frame of reference that's

more useful. And so I was like, you know, I can teach these ideas. So it actually started as Quest University where I was just telling the employees, like, hey, I want you here because you know that I believe more about your future than your own mother. And so I'm going to teach you how to do whatever you want. Teach you everything I know about being an entrepreneur, all that so you can control your life. They're just ideas. And you can adopt them as readily as I did. And so started there. And then when we started this, I was like, okay, our meaning and purpose is to make sure that nobody gets to the age of 15 without at least encountering a growth mindset at scale through story. Now that we're bifurcating the two companies, it'll basically be ideas, what people think of

impact theory now and entertainment, which is the comics and video games and Web 3 NFT stuff. Do you think in order to build a 10-figure company, you have to be some sort of way, such as obsessive, high IQ, or as Jordan Peterson would say, not agreeable? Is there some sort of like stereotype that fits the type that can build a 10-figure company? Yeah, so I think you're going to have to be all of those and get the timing right. So there is a level of intellect that is going to be absolutely critical to build a company of that scale. I think you can build a nice life with a soft.

I'll lead IQ, so I don't want people to overly focus on intelligence. It's far more about skills. But I used to teach a business class called business decision making. It's the only thing that matters. If somebody's teaching you copywriting, you're going to be mid at best. It's just it'll build you a decent business. And if you're okay with a $10 million business, which I would not be, it's perfectly fine. But if you really want to build something, you have to find a problem that people have. You have to solve it with an incredible product. You have to be amazing at managing people. You have to be able to paint a vision. You have to be able to make a product that's better than the next. You have to understand marketing and storytelling, psychology, finance. It's really

unbelievable. And on top of that, you have to be so driven that you can run what I call the physics of progress. So every business, I don't care what it is, is just a string of trial and error. So physics of progress is just a scientific method, recontextualized for business. So you're going to come up with a hypothesis. And that's just your best guess of, all right, I'm here. I want to get here and there's an obstacle between me and my goal. My hypothesis is my best guess about what I would need to do to overcome that obstacle. Then you turn that into a thing that you can do. You do that thing. It will fail to some degree. You have to stare nakedly at your own inadequacies. Figure out why it didn't work. Be very honest about that, which will then re-inform your new hypothesis, which is

better educated now. You will come up with a better thing to do. You will try that. Hopefully it will be more successful, but it'll still fail a bit. You will have to stare nakedly at your own inadequacies, figure out why it went wrong, and just keep doing that over and over and over. And I know that we're at a time, there are a million different places that it breaks down, but mostly it's ego and skill set. Quick answer, can we get? Does being rich make you happy? Being rich doesn't make you happy, but it is a profound facilitator. I would rather be happy and rich than happy and not rich. Right. It probably gives you the freedom that, you know, you... A lot. And if you're like me and you're a builder, it really allows you to short-circuit a lot of the early pain and suffering.

And just a random question, because I always get curious when I see places like this, how much does it cost to have this house just like exist? Property taxes, the landscaping. I mean, you have a literal wall on the outside of this house that is just like covered with a bunch of plants and everything. I'm sure all that could be the water bill electricity. Including tax and all that stuff, it's high six figures. High six figures just to have this house exist. Yep. Can I take a guess at it? $600,000.

Could I take a guess? Yeah, I was about to say $6.50. You're almost bang on. Yeah. That is crazy. Property tax alone is about $475,000 a year. Maybe $500,000 depending on the assessment. But it is a lot.

That is L.A. City of Los Angeles. And, well, it becomes difficult now to deduct that because of the salt cap, 10 grand. Oh, wow. Jeez. Yeah. How's the Uber looking? Three minutes. Oh, yeah, you're right.

Just right on sunset. Random questions, Graham? Anything you want to pitch or anything you want to say? Yeah, go for it. Where could we... I do want to say we would love to have you back on the podcast. Oh, my gosh. At some point, because I feel like we just scratched the service.

We're at an hour 20. We have to go shoot something else. We're literally Ubering right to the next shoot. I'd say, if you guys want to see a longer episode, I could do this easily for like three hours. Yeah. Same me on yours. Yeah, man. I'm all for it.

You should just make it a whole day. Yeah. Anything we could ever do for you last here. This has been incredible. Very kind, guys. Thank you. It was a lot of fun. Thanks for everyone.

I love this. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Anything you want to pitch or anything you want to? At Tom Bill, you. Come and find me. There we go.

Nice and simple. Cool. Thank you so much. Thank you guys for watching. Really appreciate it. Until next time. Cool. Thank you, man.

Yeah. I really want to go longer on this.